Barbarians
"SAUDI Arabia's religious police are reported to have forced schoolgirls back into a blazing building because they were not wearing Islamic headscarves and black robes."
They keep telling us, in every way they can, that life is cheap in the Muslim world. And yet they continue to surprise us, to shock us.
In this country, the police would have found blankets, jackets, anything. Passersby would have offered their own scarves, coats, whatever they had. In Saudi Arabia, they beat children with sticks and send them back into a burning building rather than let them leave without a head covering. How can such a society survive?
Saturday, March 16, 2002
A face of Afghanistan
Old news, I know, but miracles know no season. They found her, the woman who was the girl on the cover of National Geographic magazine in June 1985.
She doesn't know how old she is, let alone old she was when the original photo was taken. Thirteen, perhaps. Her parents had been dead for half her life already, when her startling, breathtaking, intense face was captured in a fleeting moment by Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Then she disappeared. She didn't trust Americans, had no reason to. She didn't know she was being looked for, and once she learned of it she had no desire to be found. Foreigners who search for you seldom mean you well.
Youth is not innocence in Afghanistan.
Old news, I know, but miracles know no season. They found her, the woman who was the girl on the cover of National Geographic magazine in June 1985.
She doesn't know how old she is, let alone old she was when the original photo was taken. Thirteen, perhaps. Her parents had been dead for half her life already, when her startling, breathtaking, intense face was captured in a fleeting moment by Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Then she disappeared. She didn't trust Americans, had no reason to. She didn't know she was being looked for, and once she learned of it she had no desire to be found. Foreigners who search for you seldom mean you well.
Youth is not innocence in Afghanistan.
Friday, March 15, 2002
Signs of the apocalypse
Mary Kate Olsen, Emmy nominee? (And is this the beginning of the end for poor Ashley?)
Mary Kate Olsen, Emmy nominee? (And is this the beginning of the end for poor Ashley?)
Thursday, March 14, 2002
Body count
I just said that most errors in newspaper coverage are corrected promptly. I believe that's true. This isn't one of those errors.
Dr Mark Herold, of the University of New Hampshire, has published estimated figures of Afghan civilian casualties, and he'll tell you how he arrived at them: The count has been challenged by, among others, Iain Murray at Tech Central Station.
A lot of media outlets are picking up Dr Herold's numbers, either because they sympathize with the anti-war groups that are using those numbers to promote their cause, or perhaps because they simply don't know the numbers are contested. When a newspaper reports any ideologically-biased set of statistics as The Truth, it produces the most insidious kind of lie -- because the newspaper report becomes source material for dissertations, term papers, and subsequent reports for decades to come.
Newspapers have no greater responsibility than to Get It Right. I believe that corrections are the single most important thing any newspaper publishes, and if it were within my power to require it, they would always be placed on the front page. I don't expect 'em to be perfect, just open and honest.
It seems to me that a few truths are incontestible, and have not yet been mentioned in this context. Allow me.
When you're fighting an enemy that dresses like civilians, hides behind civilians, and intentionally targets civilians, you're going to get civilian casualties.
You're going to inflict some of those casualties yourself. Your enemies are going to inflate those numbers however they can, either by lying to the press or by killing more people and blaming you. They don't care: They know you do.
When a conflict exists between American and Afghan counts of civilian casualties, I can think of no reason to assume that the Afghan counts are right.
By the least friendly interpretation of the casualty numbers, America is still responsible for fewer civilian casualties than her enemies are -- far fewer, when viewed as a ratio of civilian-to-military casualties.
The only alternative is not to fight. That's the alternative we've been choosing for the last ten years. It hasn't worked.
LATER: Ethics question: Let us say, as seems likely, "noncombatants" helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan. If they had been killed in the attempt, would they be counted as civilians or military casualties?
I just said that most errors in newspaper coverage are corrected promptly. I believe that's true. This isn't one of those errors.
Dr Mark Herold, of the University of New Hampshire, has published estimated figures of Afghan civilian casualties, and he'll tell you how he arrived at them: The count has been challenged by, among others, Iain Murray at Tech Central Station.
A lot of media outlets are picking up Dr Herold's numbers, either because they sympathize with the anti-war groups that are using those numbers to promote their cause, or perhaps because they simply don't know the numbers are contested. When a newspaper reports any ideologically-biased set of statistics as The Truth, it produces the most insidious kind of lie -- because the newspaper report becomes source material for dissertations, term papers, and subsequent reports for decades to come.
Newspapers have no greater responsibility than to Get It Right. I believe that corrections are the single most important thing any newspaper publishes, and if it were within my power to require it, they would always be placed on the front page. I don't expect 'em to be perfect, just open and honest.
It seems to me that a few truths are incontestible, and have not yet been mentioned in this context. Allow me.
When you're fighting an enemy that dresses like civilians, hides behind civilians, and intentionally targets civilians, you're going to get civilian casualties.
You're going to inflict some of those casualties yourself. Your enemies are going to inflate those numbers however they can, either by lying to the press or by killing more people and blaming you. They don't care: They know you do.
When a conflict exists between American and Afghan counts of civilian casualties, I can think of no reason to assume that the Afghan counts are right.
By the least friendly interpretation of the casualty numbers, America is still responsible for fewer civilian casualties than her enemies are -- far fewer, when viewed as a ratio of civilian-to-military casualties.
The only alternative is not to fight. That's the alternative we've been choosing for the last ten years. It hasn't worked.
LATER: Ethics question: Let us say, as seems likely, "noncombatants" helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan. If they had been killed in the attempt, would they be counted as civilians or military casualties?
Real censorship
The Weekly Standard reprints the full transcript of President Bush's address last month to Tsinghua University in China -- including those portions of the speech the Official Chinese Media chose not to share with their readers. Judge for yourself whether any nuances were lost. (Via Media Minded.)
While you're at it, wave your flag a little. In this country, when the press is wrong, it's most often one of two things: An honest mistake (usually corrected in the next edition) or a misinterpretation due to ideological tunnel vision. This was a deliberate action by the Chinese government to limit what its people know.
The Weekly Standard reprints the full transcript of President Bush's address last month to Tsinghua University in China -- including those portions of the speech the Official Chinese Media chose not to share with their readers. Judge for yourself whether any nuances were lost. (Via Media Minded.)
While you're at it, wave your flag a little. In this country, when the press is wrong, it's most often one of two things: An honest mistake (usually corrected in the next edition) or a misinterpretation due to ideological tunnel vision. This was a deliberate action by the Chinese government to limit what its people know.
Monday, March 11, 2002
"I'll take the Effing Obvious for $100, Alex" Headline of the Week
(Drawn to my attention by Asparagirl.)
Long-Time Pot Users Show Mental DeficitsOn the other hand, it makes it that much harder to become a long-time heavy marijuana user if you can't remember where you hid your stash...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Long-time, heavy marijuana users may eventually see their memory and attention span go up in smoke, new research suggests.
...The findings show that over time, marijuana smoking can cause intellectual impairments that "endure beyond the period of intoxication" and worsen the longer a person uses the drug, the study authors report in the March 6th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
(Drawn to my attention by Asparagirl.)
Sunday, March 10, 2002
Old technology
This page is laid out with old-fashioned borderless HTML tables. I do not understand some people's insistence that web pages should, indeed must, be laid out in Cascading Style Sheets.
I acknowledge that CSS allows you to create effects that cannot be duplicated in plain HTML. Since most people seem to use it to create low-contrast grey type on pale grey backgrounds, I question whether these effects are necessary. Tables, while they may require more coding (and thence download more slowly), look pretty much the same on everything.
Using CSS is inherently arrogant: Implicit is the assumption that your content is worth downloading software I don't otherwise need to see it correctly. For some of you, this is true. I have no attention of saying any such thing to either of my readers.
LATER: OK. I admit it. This may be the least-thought-out thing I've said since I started blogging. I'm just an old fart who doesn't want to learn new technology. I remember when tables were the Next New Thing, and people were complaining about having to upgrade their browsers to see them correctly. Then it was table background graphics and colors (which my page uses: These floating boxes are borderless table cells with individual background colors, separated by background-less table cells through which the page background shows). Now it's CSS. *sigh* I reckon I'll larn it 'ventually...
I remember writing web pages in Notepad. Now I use Dreamweaver 3.0. I don't want to go back... Does the current version do WYSIWYG CSS? Does anything?
And yes, Andrea, that's exactly what I meant. :)
LATER STILL: C'mon, Walker, PhotoDude and TurkeyBlog, I apologized, okay?
This page is laid out with old-fashioned borderless HTML tables. I do not understand some people's insistence that web pages should, indeed must, be laid out in Cascading Style Sheets.
I acknowledge that CSS allows you to create effects that cannot be duplicated in plain HTML. Since most people seem to use it to create low-contrast grey type on pale grey backgrounds, I question whether these effects are necessary. Tables, while they may require more coding (and thence download more slowly), look pretty much the same on everything.
Using CSS is inherently arrogant: Implicit is the assumption that your content is worth downloading software I don't otherwise need to see it correctly. For some of you, this is true. I have no attention of saying any such thing to either of my readers.
LATER: OK. I admit it. This may be the least-thought-out thing I've said since I started blogging. I'm just an old fart who doesn't want to learn new technology. I remember when tables were the Next New Thing, and people were complaining about having to upgrade their browsers to see them correctly. Then it was table background graphics and colors (which my page uses: These floating boxes are borderless table cells with individual background colors, separated by background-less table cells through which the page background shows). Now it's CSS. *sigh* I reckon I'll larn it 'ventually...
I remember writing web pages in Notepad. Now I use Dreamweaver 3.0. I don't want to go back... Does the current version do WYSIWYG CSS? Does anything?
And yes, Andrea, that's exactly what I meant. :)
LATER STILL: C'mon, Walker, PhotoDude and TurkeyBlog, I apologized, okay?
Saturday, March 09, 2002
Election controversy
The madness is spreading. Thank goodness the resolution didn't involve military intervention -- this time. (Although the Labor Department is still mulling whether it should investigate.)
I shouldn't even mention this, but now that elections -- I mean, *ahem*, "real" elections -- are approaching, I anticipate watching the op-ed pages fill with exhumed accusations and counter-accusations (The Supreme Court hijacked the election! No, the Supreme Court reclaimed the election from its attempted hijackers! No, you got chocolate on my peanut butter! Tastes great! Less filling!) as the Democrats search for some way to run against an 80%-plus approval rating. If there is a lesson to be learned from the SAG misfire, it is that we now know what the Democrats wanted: To start over. Everybody go back and vote again.
And the laws of the land still preclude that option. You'll just have to fill out the ballot right the first time. And if you can't manage it, you deserve not to have your vote counted.
The madness is spreading. Thank goodness the resolution didn't involve military intervention -- this time. (Although the Labor Department is still mulling whether it should investigate.)
I shouldn't even mention this, but now that elections -- I mean, *ahem*, "real" elections -- are approaching, I anticipate watching the op-ed pages fill with exhumed accusations and counter-accusations (The Supreme Court hijacked the election! No, the Supreme Court reclaimed the election from its attempted hijackers! No, you got chocolate on my peanut butter! Tastes great! Less filling!) as the Democrats search for some way to run against an 80%-plus approval rating. If there is a lesson to be learned from the SAG misfire, it is that we now know what the Democrats wanted: To start over. Everybody go back and vote again.
And the laws of the land still preclude that option. You'll just have to fill out the ballot right the first time. And if you can't manage it, you deserve not to have your vote counted.
And what's wrong with purple?
"It's not like you painted it purple or some hideous color..." --Sean Hannity, Friday night on Hannity and Colmes, to Stephen Gonzalez, who has run afoul of his local neighborhood covenants by decorating his house in red, white and blue in honor of his daughter serving in Afghanistan. (I'm not able to find the story reported elsewhere...)
I'll have you know purple is a perfectly good color...
"It's not like you painted it purple or some hideous color..." --Sean Hannity, Friday night on Hannity and Colmes, to Stephen Gonzalez, who has run afoul of his local neighborhood covenants by decorating his house in red, white and blue in honor of his daughter serving in Afghanistan. (I'm not able to find the story reported elsewhere...)
I'll have you know purple is a perfectly good color...
Tuesday, March 05, 2002
Letterman vs Koppel
Why is this getting so much attention? I mean, I'll agree it's an unusual story, but the news channels are treating it like... well, like 9-11 itself. Everyone from Brian Williams to Greta van Susteren devoted a segment to it, Williams' running a good twenty minutes or so (an eternity in cable news), so pronounced were the shockwaves felt throughout the industry.
The best explanation I've come up with is that there is nothing that fascinates newspeople more than... themselves.
I had no idea that Ted Koppel had supplanted Walter Cronkite as America's Best Loved Newsman, but I guess when your competition is distinctly un-lovable Dan Rather, marble-mouthed Tom Brokaw, and "I'm above all this -- I'm really Canadian, you know" Peter Jennings, you take the title by default. He has been running "Nightline" for 22 years, which is prehistoric as TV reckons time. And, all joking aside, he is very good at what he does.
It was pretty cheesy of Letterman to say he'd come to ABC if they were thinking of retiring "Nightline" anyway, hint hint, don't let the door slam you in the butt on the way out, Ted. What about Bill Maher? Who? (Was there ever a more mis-matched hour of television than "Nightline" and "Politically Incorrect"?)
But c'mon, how important is this, really? It's only television. They seem to think that news will be dead with "Nightline" gone, but what about all those 20/20s, 60 Minutes's, and Datelines? And with five 24/7 news networks, is Koppel's competition really Leno and Letterman, or is it Williams, O'Reilly, Aaron Brown, and Ashleigh Banfield?
No matter where Letterman goes, Koppel will work as much as he wants to. He already only works three days a week. Maybe this is a good time to give him a weekly prime-time news hour to play with; see how Katie Couric and Mike Wallace like that.
The only thing you can count on is, no matter what Letterman and Koppel do, they'll do it with buckets of money. Hard to call that losing.
LATER: Well, I'm glad that's over.
Why is this getting so much attention? I mean, I'll agree it's an unusual story, but the news channels are treating it like... well, like 9-11 itself. Everyone from Brian Williams to Greta van Susteren devoted a segment to it, Williams' running a good twenty minutes or so (an eternity in cable news), so pronounced were the shockwaves felt throughout the industry.
The best explanation I've come up with is that there is nothing that fascinates newspeople more than... themselves.
I had no idea that Ted Koppel had supplanted Walter Cronkite as America's Best Loved Newsman, but I guess when your competition is distinctly un-lovable Dan Rather, marble-mouthed Tom Brokaw, and "I'm above all this -- I'm really Canadian, you know" Peter Jennings, you take the title by default. He has been running "Nightline" for 22 years, which is prehistoric as TV reckons time. And, all joking aside, he is very good at what he does.
It was pretty cheesy of Letterman to say he'd come to ABC if they were thinking of retiring "Nightline" anyway, hint hint, don't let the door slam you in the butt on the way out, Ted. What about Bill Maher? Who? (Was there ever a more mis-matched hour of television than "Nightline" and "Politically Incorrect"?)
But c'mon, how important is this, really? It's only television. They seem to think that news will be dead with "Nightline" gone, but what about all those 20/20s, 60 Minutes's, and Datelines? And with five 24/7 news networks, is Koppel's competition really Leno and Letterman, or is it Williams, O'Reilly, Aaron Brown, and Ashleigh Banfield?
No matter where Letterman goes, Koppel will work as much as he wants to. He already only works three days a week. Maybe this is a good time to give him a weekly prime-time news hour to play with; see how Katie Couric and Mike Wallace like that.
The only thing you can count on is, no matter what Letterman and Koppel do, they'll do it with buckets of money. Hard to call that losing.
LATER: Well, I'm glad that's over.
It's worse
What do you mean, the incinerator isn't broken?
LATER: I refuse to even consider the accusation that Marsh had something naughty on his hard drive. (We webloggers often use the non-word "pr0n" rather than risk turning up in some Googlesearches we'd rather not.) It is my belief that nine out of any ten randomly-selected hard drives will contain at least one picture that someone would label "pr0n", thus its presence on a hard drive is indicative of absolutely nothing. The word is no longer an objective label, if it ever was: It is a value judgment.
And I can think of any number of valid reasons why someone who makes his living dealing with dead bodies might have a need for pictures of some of them.
This story is grotesque enough without turning it into a witch hunt. When was the last time you cleaned out your hard drive?
LATER STILL: OK, I admit it, I'm weakening on the "pictures of dead bodies" argument.
But I still insist that the presence of naughty images on Marsh's hard drive is the most normal thing we've heard about this case, and utterly irrelevant.
What do you mean, the incinerator isn't broken?
LATER: I refuse to even consider the accusation that Marsh had something naughty on his hard drive. (We webloggers often use the non-word "pr0n" rather than risk turning up in some Googlesearches we'd rather not.) It is my belief that nine out of any ten randomly-selected hard drives will contain at least one picture that someone would label "pr0n", thus its presence on a hard drive is indicative of absolutely nothing. The word is no longer an objective label, if it ever was: It is a value judgment.
And I can think of any number of valid reasons why someone who makes his living dealing with dead bodies might have a need for pictures of some of them.
This story is grotesque enough without turning it into a witch hunt. When was the last time you cleaned out your hard drive?
LATER STILL: OK, I admit it, I'm weakening on the "pictures of dead bodies" argument.
But I still insist that the presence of naughty images on Marsh's hard drive is the most normal thing we've heard about this case, and utterly irrelevant.
Hug your children
I mean, recent comments aside, I'm not the type to send kitschy touchy-feely e-mails to a few hundred of my closest friends, but some days it just seems like open season on children. And because I have a couple of whom I am very fond, these things affect me strongly.
Take this story, in which a 17-year-old girl, just "playing around", put her two-year-old niece into a front-loading coin-operated washing machine. She had no idea that the door locks when the cycle starts... The child is fine, I hasten to add, thanks to an alert attendant who pulled the machine's plug and broke the door to get her out.
So are the children who started this fire playing in the closet with a lighter. About 20 people are temporarily homeless, though.
Less fortunate is 19-month-old Hunter Neel, who fell from a ninth-floor balcony at Atlanta's Omni Hotel. The more you read, the more disgusted you'll probably get. Mom was in the exercise room with a male friend (there's no innuendo-free way to say that); Dad is a soldier in Afghanistan (on our side); Mom paid for the party (the trip from Savannah, three adjoining rooms, assorted alcohol and marijuana, eight children total -- some hers, some just friends) with Dad's hazard pay. Sounds like a real piece of work.
At this hour, I won't wake my kids, but I'll hug them extra hard before I send them off to school tomorrow...
I'm trying to decide whether to show them these stories. On the one hand, I've always thought we should learn from other people's mistakes: We won't live long enough to make them all ourselves. And, in two of the three cases, the kids are OK. On the other hand...
I mean, recent comments aside, I'm not the type to send kitschy touchy-feely e-mails to a few hundred of my closest friends, but some days it just seems like open season on children. And because I have a couple of whom I am very fond, these things affect me strongly.
Take this story, in which a 17-year-old girl, just "playing around", put her two-year-old niece into a front-loading coin-operated washing machine. She had no idea that the door locks when the cycle starts... The child is fine, I hasten to add, thanks to an alert attendant who pulled the machine's plug and broke the door to get her out.
So are the children who started this fire playing in the closet with a lighter. About 20 people are temporarily homeless, though.
Less fortunate is 19-month-old Hunter Neel, who fell from a ninth-floor balcony at Atlanta's Omni Hotel. The more you read, the more disgusted you'll probably get. Mom was in the exercise room with a male friend (there's no innuendo-free way to say that); Dad is a soldier in Afghanistan (on our side); Mom paid for the party (the trip from Savannah, three adjoining rooms, assorted alcohol and marijuana, eight children total -- some hers, some just friends) with Dad's hazard pay. Sounds like a real piece of work.
At this hour, I won't wake my kids, but I'll hug them extra hard before I send them off to school tomorrow...
I'm trying to decide whether to show them these stories. On the one hand, I've always thought we should learn from other people's mistakes: We won't live long enough to make them all ourselves. And, in two of the three cases, the kids are OK. On the other hand...
Marketing machines
I made a promise to myself long ago never to buy anything from anyone who programs a machine to call me to tell me about it. I have never had any reason to regret this. I am not a big fan of telemarketing -- I'm sure they are perfectly nice people with families who love them, and you gotta make a living, but surely you could have found a more honorable profession. Isn't McDonald's hiring?
The only thing worse than telemarketers is robotic telemarketers. If you are going to waste my time trying to sell me siding, you can damned well waste your own time too.
So imagine my surprise when Steven den Beste, being buffeted by political dialing machines in the days leading up to the California primary, said:
Oh, really?
But wait: My daughter's middle school uses one to keep the parents informed of upcoming events. The public library uses one to phone us when the book my wife ordered on interlibrary loan arrives. (You should hear how the voice-synthesis-droid pronounces her name...) Are those illegal, too?
Actually, I rather hope they are. They could just as easily use e-mail (the middle school already does). Ah, technology.
I made a promise to myself long ago never to buy anything from anyone who programs a machine to call me to tell me about it. I have never had any reason to regret this. I am not a big fan of telemarketing -- I'm sure they are perfectly nice people with families who love them, and you gotta make a living, but surely you could have found a more honorable profession. Isn't McDonald's hiring?
The only thing worse than telemarketers is robotic telemarketers. If you are going to waste my time trying to sell me siding, you can damned well waste your own time too.
So imagine my surprise when Steven den Beste, being buffeted by political dialing machines in the days leading up to the California primary, said:
It's a violation [of] federal law to use a device which calls a number and plays a recording to whomever picks up the phone.
Oh, really?
But wait: My daughter's middle school uses one to keep the parents informed of upcoming events. The public library uses one to phone us when the book my wife ordered on interlibrary loan arrives. (You should hear how the voice-synthesis-droid pronounces her name...) Are those illegal, too?
Actually, I rather hope they are. They could just as easily use e-mail (the middle school already does). Ah, technology.
Sunday, March 03, 2002
One less reason to blog...
...is when I find a page like Cut on the Bias that says so many of the things I've been thinking but haven't had the wit to say.
...is when I find a page like Cut on the Bias that says so many of the things I've been thinking but haven't had the wit to say.
Saturday, March 02, 2002
Through a mirror darkly
"Roger Franklin ponders on the quirk of fate that has left confessed philanderer Bill Clinton in high public demand, but confessed philanderer Gary Condit facing ruin."
Good point. What's the difference? (And why did it take a columnist from New Zealand to point it out?)
"Roger Franklin ponders on the quirk of fate that has left confessed philanderer Bill Clinton in high public demand, but confessed philanderer Gary Condit facing ruin."
Good point. What's the difference? (And why did it take a columnist from New Zealand to point it out?)
About that Georgia crematorium...
Jay Zilber wonders why the blogosphere hasn't latched onto this. If you haven't heard (and how is that possible?), the Tri-State Crematory in Walker County, Georgia (just south of Chattanooga, serving funeral homes in northwest Georgia, northeast Alabama, and south-central Tennessee) is the center of what has become an national story, bordering on international -- and it just gets stranger every day.
Apparently, the actual oven itself hasn't worked in... well, nobody knows how long. And nobody would have known about it, but that a woman walking her dog nearby stumbled onto a human skull.
It's getting to the point that every mound of dirt you stick a shovel in, every closet or crypt you open, you find more bodies -- bodies that were sent to Tri-State for cremation and never cremated. The count is up to 339 as of yesterday, according to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, of which 82 have been identified. They're getting ready to drain the nearby lake, and nobody is guessing what they'll find.
Families are having their urns tested, and discovering that they contain cement dust. Or worse, they contain human remains -- but the body of their loved one was discovered more-or-less intact on the crematory grounds, so who's in the urn?
I would think that the gas company could check its metering records and deduce when the crematory stopped working, but no such announcement has been made. Perhaps it's covered under the gag order. It's darned conspicuous in its absence.
The General Assembly (the State House) has discovered to their chagrin that mishandling a corpse as such isn't against the law. The owner of the crematorium is facing two misdemeanor charges of fraud per identified body: One for accepting money for a service never performed, and one for misrepresenting the contents of the urns being returned to the families. Which is to say he'd get off pretty light if there were only one or two bodies...
What was he thinking? Nobody knows. Maybe he was preparing a diorama of downtown Noble, Ga. Maybe he wanted to collect the set.
Aside from the mounting numbers of bodies, how can this story get worse?
Now, I ask you: Does this sound like a bloggable topic?
LATER: I guess it does. Cut on the Bias asks, "Where are the articles on the family?" That's certainly a valid question, since some reports claim that some of these bodies pre-date Ray Marsh's taking over the business (though that's not said as clearly as I just said it). That question, too, is oddly and conspicuously not asked, along with the "How long has this been going on?" issue.
As incredible as it seems based on what we've heard so far, I have a sick feeling we haven't heard the half of it yet.
LATER YET: Honesty compels me to report that Fritz Schranck of Sneaking Suspicions was there first.
MUCH LATER YET: What do you mean, the incinerator isn't broken?
Jay Zilber wonders why the blogosphere hasn't latched onto this. If you haven't heard (and how is that possible?), the Tri-State Crematory in Walker County, Georgia (just south of Chattanooga, serving funeral homes in northwest Georgia, northeast Alabama, and south-central Tennessee) is the center of what has become an national story, bordering on international -- and it just gets stranger every day.
Apparently, the actual oven itself hasn't worked in... well, nobody knows how long. And nobody would have known about it, but that a woman walking her dog nearby stumbled onto a human skull.
It's getting to the point that every mound of dirt you stick a shovel in, every closet or crypt you open, you find more bodies -- bodies that were sent to Tri-State for cremation and never cremated. The count is up to 339 as of yesterday, according to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, of which 82 have been identified. They're getting ready to drain the nearby lake, and nobody is guessing what they'll find.
Families are having their urns tested, and discovering that they contain cement dust. Or worse, they contain human remains -- but the body of their loved one was discovered more-or-less intact on the crematory grounds, so who's in the urn?
I would think that the gas company could check its metering records and deduce when the crematory stopped working, but no such announcement has been made. Perhaps it's covered under the gag order. It's darned conspicuous in its absence.
The General Assembly (the State House) has discovered to their chagrin that mishandling a corpse as such isn't against the law. The owner of the crematorium is facing two misdemeanor charges of fraud per identified body: One for accepting money for a service never performed, and one for misrepresenting the contents of the urns being returned to the families. Which is to say he'd get off pretty light if there were only one or two bodies...
What was he thinking? Nobody knows. Maybe he was preparing a diorama of downtown Noble, Ga. Maybe he wanted to collect the set.
Aside from the mounting numbers of bodies, how can this story get worse?
Now, I ask you: Does this sound like a bloggable topic?
LATER: I guess it does. Cut on the Bias asks, "Where are the articles on the family?" That's certainly a valid question, since some reports claim that some of these bodies pre-date Ray Marsh's taking over the business (though that's not said as clearly as I just said it). That question, too, is oddly and conspicuously not asked, along with the "How long has this been going on?" issue.
As incredible as it seems based on what we've heard so far, I have a sick feeling we haven't heard the half of it yet.
LATER YET: Honesty compels me to report that Fritz Schranck of Sneaking Suspicions was there first.
MUCH LATER YET: What do you mean, the incinerator isn't broken?
Some things are more important than blogging
This, from Rich Hailey's Shots Across the Bow, is one of them.
This, from Rich Hailey's Shots Across the Bow, is one of them.
The wave of the future is mired in the past
Oh, you must read Tom Mangan's collection of words and expressions that should be Banned For Life... er, that is, "forever banned from the nation's news reports".
My own pet peeves (since there's no obvious way to contribute to Tom's list, I'll post them here):
"[Something] remains to be seen" when referring to any future event or unresolved question. Isn't it obvious?
"This much is certain": I expect you to be certain of everything you tell me, else why bother?
"First annual": You can't know it'll be annual until the second one happens.
"Diva": I don't think it means what you think it means. It's not a compliment.
"Jewelry": It's pronounced ju-el-ry, not ju-le-ry. Oddly, even people who make their living selling it make this mistake.
And speak in complete sentences, please! Next time you're watching a news report, count 'em. I don't mean comments from so-called normal people: I mean the deliberately-scripted choppy fragments that news anchors string together and call "reporting" these days.
Oh, you must read Tom Mangan's collection of words and expressions that should be Banned For Life... er, that is, "forever banned from the nation's news reports".
My own pet peeves (since there's no obvious way to contribute to Tom's list, I'll post them here):
"[Something] remains to be seen" when referring to any future event or unresolved question. Isn't it obvious?
"This much is certain": I expect you to be certain of everything you tell me, else why bother?
"First annual": You can't know it'll be annual until the second one happens.
"Diva": I don't think it means what you think it means. It's not a compliment.
"Jewelry": It's pronounced ju-el-ry, not ju-le-ry. Oddly, even people who make their living selling it make this mistake.
And speak in complete sentences, please! Next time you're watching a news report, count 'em. I don't mean comments from so-called normal people: I mean the deliberately-scripted choppy fragments that news anchors string together and call "reporting" these days.
Friday, March 01, 2002
"We think we communicated our message."
Imagine, for the moment, that you live in Texas. You've just received a piece of mail on letterhead stationery reading "Tony Sanchez for Texas Gonernor". Do you bother reading further? How much credibility does this campaign have, if they can't spell "Governor"?
The letter was written to the Texas State Teachers Association, thanking them for their endorsement. (No surprise there, teachers' associations always endorse Democrats.) He got the name of the organization wrong: He thought "Teachers" took an apostrophe, and it doesn't.
Unfortunately, the letter doesn't get better after that. Instead, it betrays the fact that the writer didn't get enough attention from those teachers back when it might have helped. Campaign manager Glenn Smith acknowledges the errors, but judges them trivial. "The substance of the letter speaks much louder than the small errors in the writing might," the Chronicle quotes him as saying. "We think we communicated our message."
Yep. You sure did. Grammar don't matter, so long as ya votes fer us.
LATER: Sanchez won the primary: He'll face incumbent Rick Perry (Bush's Lieutenant, er, Gonernor) in Nonember.
Imagine, for the moment, that you live in Texas. You've just received a piece of mail on letterhead stationery reading "Tony Sanchez for Texas Gonernor". Do you bother reading further? How much credibility does this campaign have, if they can't spell "Governor"?
The letter was written to the Texas State Teachers Association, thanking them for their endorsement. (No surprise there, teachers' associations always endorse Democrats.) He got the name of the organization wrong: He thought "Teachers" took an apostrophe, and it doesn't.
Unfortunately, the letter doesn't get better after that. Instead, it betrays the fact that the writer didn't get enough attention from those teachers back when it might have helped. Campaign manager Glenn Smith acknowledges the errors, but judges them trivial. "The substance of the letter speaks much louder than the small errors in the writing might," the Chronicle quotes him as saying. "We think we communicated our message."
Yep. You sure did. Grammar don't matter, so long as ya votes fer us.
LATER: Sanchez won the primary: He'll face incumbent Rick Perry (Bush's Lieutenant, er, Gonernor) in Nonember.
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